BERKELEY — The Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is pleased to announce that the 2013 Toshihide Numata Book Award has been awarded to Daniel Arnold, Associate Professor of the Philosophy of Religions at the University of Chicago Divinity School, for his book Brains, Buddhas, and Believing: The Problem of Intentionality in Classical Buddhist and Cognitive-Scientific Philosophy of Mind (Columbia University Press, 2012).
The Toshihide Numata Book Award in Buddhism is awarded on an annual basis to an outstanding book in the area of Buddhist studies. The selection is made by an outside committee that is appointed annually. The members of this year's committee were effusive in their praise of Brains, Buddhas, and Believing. One called it "an openly critical, highly refreshing and thought-provoking engagement with historical forms of Buddhist thought that takes them seriously as philosophy. The work is elegantly written, and remarkably accessible given its difficult subject matter. As Brains Buddhas, and Believing also offers new avenues for rethinking Dharmakīrti's anti-physicalism in his own intellectual environment, it will be of considerable benefit to philosophers as well as to more historically and philologically oriented scholars in Buddhist Studies." Another commented, "the standard of scholarship throughout is very high; its argument is, I think, intrinsically of interest and importance, but the manner in which the concerns and arguments of ancient Indian philosophical discussions are brought to bear on current philosophical debates in the philosophy of mind performs an important service to the academic study of Indian philosophy."
Professor Arnold will be presented with the Toshihide Numata Book Award on the afternoon of November 15, 2013, at the Jodo Shinshu Center in Berkeley (2140 Durant Avenue, at the south west corner of the Berkeley campus). The presentation, which will begin at 3 PM, will be followed by a public lecture by Professor Arnold. A panel discussion, that will include presentations by Professors Parimal Patil (Harvard University), John Taber (University of New Mexico), and Evan Thompson (University of British Columbia), will follow.